Impact of Burst Assembly on TCP Performance in Hybrid Wireless/OBS Networks

The wireless access scenario has a key role in today communication systems. On the other hand, high speed network paradigms like optical burst-switched networks are emerging as changeling technologies for next generation Internet. In this context, the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) still remain the most deployed transport protocol. The assembly algorithm performed at the edge nodes to create optical bursts influences TCP congestion control in the presence of burst and single segment loss. Here this influence is analyzed in the heterogeneous scenario where wireless access networks feed an optical burst switched link. The results, obtained by ns-2 simulations, show that the burst assembly algorithms positively affect average throughput and TCP fairness with both size-based and time-based assembly algorithms.